This film is everything you want in a music documentary.

Just for starters, it captures a vibrant subject in the midst of a life-defining quest. Ndour, a Senegalese Sufi Muslim with a generous aesthetic and philosophy, spends years bringing the tenets and history of his faith to an epic album; then his own countrymen either ignore it or condemn it for blasphemy until it gains traction abroad.

But what makes this movie so potent is the way the director, Elizabeth Chai Vasarhelyi, renders this story with a lyricism, sensitivity and power that matches Ndour's own. Spirituality, musicality and cinematic momentum merge. It's an elating experience.

Posted by Michael Sragow at 8:32 AM in Instant Analysis | Permalink | Comments (0)
                       

Rock slides, rattlesnakes, burning embers...this year's 3D classic, Roy Ward Baker's Inferno, had everything necessary to thrill an extra-dimensional audience's heart.

Most of the 1953 movie consists of Robert Ryan trying to crawl his way out of the desert with a broken leg. See, he's been left behind by his two-timing wife (Rhonda Fleming) and her scheming boy toy (William Lundigan).

The desert landscapes proved surprisingly receptive to 3D filmmaking, what with all the solitary cactus and rocks to provide perspective. And even though the traditional 3D trick of throwing things at the audience didn't show up until the climactic fight scene, the experience was all good.

Kudos to festival major domo Jed Dietz, who pulled every available string to get 20th Century Fox to lend the festival its only extant print, and to Charles projectionist John Standiford for making sure the movie shone in all its Technicolor glory. In fact, the only complaint (and make no mistake, the print was gorgeous) is that Fleming's red hair didn't jump off the screen the way I thought it would. Still, that's a small complaint: she spent plenty of the movie smoldering in her classic 1950's way.

Now, the search begins for next year's 3D prize.

Any thoughts on what movie you'd like to see in that extra dimension at MFF 2010?

Posted by Chris Kaltenbach at 3:02 PM in Goings On, Instant Analysis | Permalink | Comments (0)
                       

More from a conversation with Levinson about his new picture, PoliWood: 

"What's funny about Hollywood is that it's always considered liberal. But break it down and Hollywood is Republican. It's owned by Republican corporations. GE is Republican; Disney is Republican; Murdoch is Republican; they're all Republicans.

"It's the employees that are the Democrats. Yet when people get angry at the products of Hollywood, they get angry at the employees, not the owners. It's the same as in Detroit!"

Then Levinson brings the analogy home: "The problem with Hollywood is that when it's concentrating only on making X-Men 6 or Spider-Man 16, it's like Detroit only making SUVs!"

 

Posted by Michael Sragow at 2:37 PM in Instant Analysis | Permalink | Comments (1)
                       

All creatures great and very small are front and center in Jessica Oreck's Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo, a documentary that sheds light on Japan's obsession with the world's six-legged inhabitants, Narrated in Japanese (with English subtitles), the movie looks to establish a cultural understanding of why the Japanese spend so much time catching, buying and writing about moths, butterflies, beetles, dragonflies (said to symbolize bravery), crickets (known as singing insects) and fireflies (symbols for unrequited love).

Melodic and poetic, Beetle Queen makes bug collecting seems positively fascinating and utterly cool -- to the point where I shuddered when, toward the end of the film, one insect gatherer involuntarily swatted the back of his neck to brush off any bugs there. I mean, who knows what untold riches he was casually brushing aside?

I wish there had been more hard information in the film, identifying the vartious insects, explaining just how much of an economic force the critters are in the Japanese economy (beetles can sell for hundreds of dollars) and detailing just how bug-pet owners keep their companions alive. Still, Beetle Queen was a lovely, rich exploration of an arthropod-centric culture I barely knew existed. Next time I find a praying mantis crawling up my screen door, I'll show a lot more respect.

Beetle Queen Conquers Tokyo will have a second screening, at noon Sunday at MICA's Brown Center, 1301 Mount Royal Ave. Leave the bug spray at home.

Photo: Director Jessica Oreck, during the post-film Q&A.

Posted by Chris Kaltenbach at 6:22 AM in Instant Analysis | Permalink | Comments (0)
                       

This openhearted and energetic documentary opens up the competition of the World Karting Association for audiences who don't realize that go-karts today are sleek, road-hugging machines that can go 80 mph and put middle-school-age drivers on track to enter NASCAR. Director Marshall Curry knows just where to point his camera to clarify the tension of each race. And with his loving and intimate coverage of three competitors -- ultra-disciplined Josh and unsure neophyte Annabeth, who race against each other, and the heartbreaking wild boy Brandon, who drives in an older division -- Racing Dreams becomes one of the wisest of all recent films about the pressures that shape American children's personalities and fates. It's a bit like American Teen on wheels -- except its characters haven't hit their teen years yet. It's also, often, very funny.

Posted by Michael Sragow at 2:04 AM in Instant Analysis | Permalink | Comments (0)
                       

During the Q&A following Friday morning's showing of his Modern Love Is Automatic, director Zach Green said he'd "wanted to do a nurse/dominatrix thing for a really long time."

Good thing he carried through. Although a little strong for mid-morning sensibilities (the notice at the beginning of the movie, that no one under 18 should watch it, got a round of applause), Modern Love turned out to be spellbinding -- a rumination on sexuality and need, with a little mordant humor mixed in, far more contemplative than it was raunchy.

The movie centers on two roommates: closed-off, isolated Lorraine (Melodie Sisk), nurse in a podiatrist's office by day, dominatrix in her free time, and innocent, effervescent Adrian (Maggie Ross), who graduated at the top of her strip-mall beauty school class. The two rub off more on each other than either might have originally thought possible, which is only one of the many unexpected (and often understated) delights the film has to offer. 

 

Continue reading "The best nurse/dominatrix movie you'd ever want to see" »

Posted by Chris Kaltenbach at 4:54 PM in Instant Analysis | Permalink | Comments (1)
                       

Introducing her scintillating and moving portrait of a modern graphic-design giant as a Renaissance artist, Milton Glaser: To Delight and Inform, Wendy Keys quipped that the only Baltimore distinction it had was a reverse distinction: it was the one recent documentary that did not have Waters in it.

But Dr. Bob Hieronimus, Charm City's world authority on the Beatles' spiritual brand of psychedelia, was present to point out the influence of Glaser's Sixties work (including his famous image of an ebony Dylan profile outlined with rainbow-colored hair) on the cartoon Yellow Submarine.

And after Keys' aesthetically and intellectually compelling account of a life and career that encompasses accomplishments as different as the creation of New York magazine and the redesign of Grand Union supermarkets, Keys found one more point of congruence. Waters has always said Baltimore is devoid of irony, and though Glaser's work is full of wit and play, its warmth and strength of purpose transcend irony.

Perhaps Keys' career as the Executive Producer/Programming for the Film Society of Lincoln Center and part of the selection committee for both the New York Film Festival and the New Directors/New Films series sensitized her to the accomplishment of a close artist friend like Glaser, who obliterates the barricades (as the best movies should do) between high and low culture. Keys says this is her first excursion to the visitor side of a festival microphone. Her film increases a viewer's appetite for more of Glaser's work -- and for more of her own, too.

Posted by Michael Sragow at 3:28 PM in Instant Analysis | Permalink | Comments (0)